'Either update your photos, or don't vote in next polls'

May 28, 2013, 04:46 IST
|
Priyankka Deshpande

Annoyed by the poor response from voters, the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) of Shivaji Nagar assembly segment circulated a notice among the residents to immediately submit their photos that are necessary to update the voter's registration list, or be ready to lose chance of voting in the next election.

The district Food Distribution Officer Dnyaneshwar Jawanjal, who has additional responsibility of ERO of Shivaji Nagar assembly segment, decided to take the names of those who haven’t submitted their photos to the Booth Level Officer (BLO) or to the nearby Voter’s Help Centers.

Last resort: Rajnikant Pande with his wife Bharti with their voters card. File Pic

So far, only 5,028 people have updated their photos in Shivaji Nagar assembly Segment while the total population of the constituency is above 1 lakh.

Reason for threat The drive to update photographs of those in the existing voters’ list initiated by the State Election Commission is to stop bogus voting, According to Jawanjal, it might be a possibility that those refusing to submit photos could be wanting to cast fake votes under the name of some other person who is possibly not alive or has migrated to some other place.

The photo updating drive has been getting low response since April 1. The drive is ending on June 30. By then, the district election office has to update photos of 15 lakh voters from 21 assembly segments in the district.

“So far, we have only 95,000 voters whose photos are successfully updated on the voter’s registration list. While 1.15 lakh names of the dead, migrated and repeated voters have been deleted so far,” said Deputy Chief Election Officer Apurva Wankhede.

In its issue published on May 3, MiD DAY had highlighted that Deputy Election Commission of India Sudhir Tripathi had slammed all EROs for slow progress of the photo updating work in the city.

“Despite creating awareness, the voters are least bothered about it. When our BLOs approach the voters to collect their photos, they sent them back with excuses like we don’t have photos, or ask them to come some other time,” said Jawanjal.